The Smart One

by Joe Clifford Faust

Dink Stapleton is a two-bit hoodlum who lives in Wapakoneta, Ohio. All he wants to do is keep his nose clean and fly under the radar – something that's easier said than done. His less-smart half-brother keeps trying to suck him into a plan to counterfeit twenty dollar bills. He has run afoul of a local wannabe crime figure. And his employer wants him to track down a scandalous painting by a local artist.

Unfortunately, Dink's boss isn’t the only one who wants the painting. There’s the stripper who posed for the painting; the loose cannon who is obsessed with the stripper; and the pretentious comic book illustrator turned pretentious artist who created the painting to begin with.

Complicating matters are ten-grand worth of funny twenties that have gone walkabout, a missing car with the world's worst paint job, and a girlfriend who wants him to find Jesus. It’s a lot to wade through if Dink is going to find the painting and figure out who gets it, but he should be able to work it out. After all, he’s the smart one.

The Smart One is vintage Faust, filled with wry humor, quirky characters, crackling dialogue, and a plot that keeps the pages turning.

260 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2022

About the author

Joe Clifford Faust is an American author best known for his seven science fiction novels primarily written during the 1980s and 1990s, including A Death of Honor, The Company Man, the Angel's Luck Trilogy (all published by Del Rey Books), and the satirical Pembroke Hall novels (published by Bantam Spectra). His novels are known for their tightly controlled plots and their sense of humor. Like many authors, he draws inspiration from previous and current occupations, including projectionist, record store clerk, radio announcer, sheriff's dispatcher, and advertising copywriter. He currently works in advertising, but keeps his hand in writing and through other creative projects such as occasional forays into cartooning and songwriting.

On February 16, 2011, Faust announced on his blog that he had created a publishing company called Thief Media as an organ to distribute his out-of-print novels in ebook formats. Releases are scheduled to begin in March 2011 with "A Death of Honor" and will include two previously unpublished novels, "The Mushroom Shift" and "Trust."